Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life. Don Schweitzer

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Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life - Don Schweitzer

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study of Jesus Christ begins here for the following reasons. The Gospels interpreted the history of Jesus each in a different way in light of his resurrection, the early church’s experiences of the Holy Spirit, and the concerns and insights of the church communities they originated from. The quest for the historical Jesus attempts to discern the historical figure of Jesus amidst this interpretation. The results of this quest are never final. But historical knowledge of Jesus can provide a check on the human imagination’s temptation to fashion images of Jesus determined by self-interests and can also help keep an understanding of Jesus historically concrete, showing how and where Jesus located himself amidst the social conflicts of his day. From this we can gain a sense of where one should follow Jesus and expect to encounter him in the present.

      Chapter 2 examines New Testament descriptions of Jesus’ resurrection and its meaning for Christian faith. It is necessary to study Jesus’ resurrection in order to understand who Jesus Christ is and the nature of his saving significance. It was as a result of Jesus’ resurrection that he was proclaimed as the Christ and became the center of what became a new religion. In the course of this Jesus’ resurrection triggered a far-reaching doctrinal development that eventually helped transform the Christian understanding of God.

      Chapter 3 traces the course of this transformation, examining the development of the patristic church’s understanding of Jesus Christ that culminated in the decisions of the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. These decisions did not end christological inquiry. They are interpreted here as providing guidelines for understanding Jesus Christ. In tracing this development this chapter also notes some gains and losses it involved for the early church’s understanding of Jesus Christ.

      Chapter 4 reverses the direction of inquiry and presents a descending Christology. Chapter 3 traced and critically accepted the developments leading to the affirmations of Nicaea and Chalcedon. This chapter seeks to understand Jesus Christ and God in light of them. Given that Jesus is the Christ, the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, how should the Trinity be understood? What was the reason for the incarnation? By answering these questions, this chapter provides a metaphysical framework for the understanding of Jesus’ saving significance and relationships that follows in parts II and III.

      1 The Historical Jesus:

       His Message and Person

      The quest has produced numerous contradictory images of Jesus. These often betray an ideological bias in relation to cultural, political, and religious conflicts of the present. Yet understandings of Jesus produced by the quest cannot be simply dismissed as expressions of current

      This chapter presents a description and interpretation of Jesus’ message and person drawn from the work of people engaged in the quest for the historical Jesus. Subsequent chapters will return to the historical Jesus in relation to particular questions. This chapter has a broader focus: Jesus’ proclamation of the coming reign of God and how this was intertwined with his person. Who Jesus was and how he lived was a medium for his message. Conversely this message and the way he proclaimed it made an implicit claim about his person, which eventually led to his death.

      The Setting

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